1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a document data processing apparatus employing image data, and in particular, to an apparatus for and a method of processing data for producing, for example, in general business processing fields, a document of a predetermined format or form having blank or empty cells for character data input and/or output operations. Cells are provided, to input data from a keyboard to a data base or to output data from the data base or the keyboard.
2. Description of Related Art
There exists a case where a business processing apparatus used in an office such as a work station, an office processor, a personal computer, or a word processor is adopted to issue documents (forms) having predetermined formats, for example, application blanks (or forms), data input slips, chits, vounchers, and other forms for various items such as accounting, statistic, and detailed items and/or to input data to a data base in accordance with formats preset on the document forms displayed. In such a situation, document formats or forms having blank fields or cells are required to be defined on a display screen of the apparatus for the data input/output operations. In a typical format or form definition method of conventional technology described, for example, in Hitachi's Manual entitled "ETOILE/OP", a cursor or the like is moved on a display screen to define ruled lines and characters. Thereafter, a program which issues the defined items is produced and is edited by use of a program editor or other programming tools.
However, in accordance with the conventional technology, in order to issue a new document in which the format is unknown to the apparatus, a long period of time is required by an expert is necessary knowledge and with respect to the program. Such a new format of document appears not only at an initial installation of the business equipment in a company but also in a rather routine manner. For example, a firm related to the pertinent company may request a specified slip or form to be used. Consequently, it has been desired to simplify the format definition job or processing and to increase the speed of the processing.
In this regard, the applicant of the present invention has been proposed apparatus in the Japanese patent application Ser. No. 63-209975 (U.S. patent application Ser. No. 397117). In this reference, a document processing system is provided where a form document having blanks or blank fields in which data items are to be described is transformed into image data such that based on the document image, a structure of a table form included in the document is recognized to automatically create ruled line vector data items, which are employed to draw a table. Moreover, the applicant of the present invention has been proposed in the Japanese patent application Ser. No. 59-180517 (U.S. patent application Ser. No. 766943) where a document analysis system in which form data for a character recognition by means of an optical character recognition (OCR) equipment is automatically generated from document image data.
In the document analysis system, the document image data is processed to recognize a physical structure of a table form constituted with line patterns included in the document. Thereafter, the system analyzes kinds, attributes or attributions, and relations of dependence with respect to rectangular cell regions (which are called frames in the preceding application) constituting the table form, thereby recognizing a logical structure of the document. However, in the conventional technology, the logical structure is recognized to apply a recognition result to the OCR. Namely, the analysis is limited to the cell types (indicating a cell for setting therein an item name or a cell to be loaded with a data item), the cell attributions (kinds and allowance ranges of characters loaded in cells), and relations of dependence between cells.